Taking place in beautiful central Bristol on Saturday 20th June, there are races for juniors, Cat 1-4 women and 2 men’s races, Cat 3-4 and Cat 1-2. They’ve got a crowdfunder which has hit their initial target of £10,000, and they have 5 days left to reach their stretch goal of £15,000, and for just £12 you can help them achieve that AND get this fabulous t-shirt!

You can also enter via that page – they’re in the process of getting British Cycling registration, so it’ll count for points – and if you’re in/near Bristol on the day, why not pledge to be a volunteer too? Scroll down for more info!

Hi team, I just wanted to jot down a few quick notes about a project I’m pretty excited by. As you may (or may not) be aware, for a little while now we’ve been looking for ways to help Sarah get a little bit of steady income from all the work she does on women’s cycling. First off we added a few items that you could purchase in our Redbubble store. And now it’s come time for the next thing.

Now Sarah’s launched a Patreon account! If you’re not already familiar with the idea behind Patreon, it’s a site that seeks to help content creators (think artists, musicians, writers, etc.) connect with fans of their work and be supported directly by them in order to help them continue to create works.

Supporters (or Patrons) commit to supporting creators with a set amount per month (it can be as little as $2) and there are reward tiers and stretch goals and such. So please do take a few moments to visit Sarah’s page and look through the options. If you can afford to help support her, then THANK YOU SO MUCH from both of us (but especially from Sarah). And even if you can’t, if you’d help by sharing it with your cycling friends, rich relatives and so on, that would also be super, super cool of you.

As always, Sarah loves you anyway and wants you to win every single race you enter. Thanks! 🙂

1. If you’re in the UK, you might have seen a lot of things on various BBC sites on the different between prize money for women and men in the same sports. That’s partly to do with this BBC report, which does a sport-by-sport comparison (including the Para-sports, which really suffer here) – and there’s an article about it too on the BBC site.

2. One of the places this has been talked about is on BBC Radio 4 programme Woman’s Hour, where superstar Emma Pooley was discussing the issues. If you missed it, listen here (if it’s restricted, you might need something like Hola set to the UK)

3. Helen Wyman‘s latest blog on Cyclingnews talks about the work she’s been doing on prize money within cyclocross, and how she worked with Twenty20 Cycles to get equal prize money for the women at Saturday’s Koppenbergcross. Helen also talked to me recently about how since men’s cyclocross in Belgium is pretty much at saturation point, so women’s cycling is the obvious way to bring in more audience – that’s in part 1 of my interview with her, in part 2 she talks more about her work with the UCI.

This week there was a minor twitter controversy, as in a podcast interview with Suze Clemitson about women’s cycling, for Velocast, UCI President Brian Cookson said that he wouldn’t be looking to introduce a minimum wage for women road riders this year, which had been one of his election manifesto promises, and on twitter he cited advice from the UCI Women’s Commission as a reason for this decision.

I was interested in this, and wanted to know more, so I asked Kristy Scrymgeour, who sits on the Commission as owner and manager for Specialized-lululemon, and she told me a bit more detail about why the Commission have advised this – and how the minimum wage will be addressed.

Kristy Scrymgeour has seen cycling from all kinds of angles – she started as a cyclist in Australia and the USA, then became a cycling journalist when Cyclingnews was first starting, before moving to work for the ground-breaking HTC-Highroad team, in charge of PR and media for the men’s and women’s teams. When that team folded, she took the women’s side forward as Specialized-lululemon, who have just won their fourth Vårgårda Team Time Trial World Cup, and then backed that up with their rider Chantal Blaak winning her first solo World Cup at the Vårgårda Road Race. But alongside all this success, they’re also crowd-funding for their team to continue next year, with the Project X fundraiser.

Sarah talked to Kristy about the crowd-funding, and tons more, including how the team got through their 2013 full of injuries and dealing with the “less good” start to 2014 (and how “less good” can refer to results, but it made them stronger); how they stay on top of the TTT; running a race programme across two continents; the team goals for the rest of the season; Kristy’s work on the UCI’s women’s commission of the UCI, and changes we might see in the future.

It’s pretty crazy, but bike races in Europe have major prize differentiations between women and men – and it runs across different kinds of racing. Last week there was a great “first” – the Koppenbergcross became the first European C1 cyclocross race to offer equal prizes, and it’s especially interesting because the money behind it – just €5,000! – was put up by Twenty20 Cycling, a 2-shop bike company based in Baltimore USA. So political, I love it, the fact it takes a USA bike shop to bring this step towards equality to Europe!

I’ve always wondered how much we’ve talking about, when women’s cycling teams talk about sponsorship etc. I’ve heard that an top-level women’s team cost about €300k, or the very top level teams are €400k, so I was very interested to read this article on Cycling Weekly, where Matrix Fitness Racing Academy DS/owner/manger Stefan Wyman talks about how much it cost to run a women’s team. I’m going to interview Stef over the weekend, but in the meantime, check out these figures, and if you know any companies pass them on!